The main objective of this initiative was to produce a new creative asset (video) in a unique format (stop-motion) that we could use in various advertising channels to market our mobile app. Video campaigns had heretofore been challenging for us in marketing delivery.com. In an industry that is constantly evolving, how do you make a video asset that will be relevant for more than a couple weeks?
The majority of delivery.com's successful marketing campaigns have had static print or digital assets that feature bright images, fun and engaging copy, and clear messages. These assets can easily be switched out to appeal to different audiences, reference cultural events, or respond to changes in the weather.
Our past attempt at video (which we placed in both digital video and TV channels) prior to this was not unique enough - it was a standard scripted "commercial" that was too similar to our competitions' campaigns and came with an expensive price tag. This asset proved to not be attention grabbing enough when put in front of the public and did not achieve its main goal of explaining our value proposition to new, potential delivery.com customers. We found ourselves faced with the challenge of proving to potential customers the ease with which you can buy food, alcohol, and groceries on the iOS app, all while staying within the 30 second time limit. This time around, we wanted to do something unique, trend-setting and eye-catching.
One of our main business objectives in Q4'15 was driving downloads of our mobile app which we launched in early November. To spread the word of the new delivery.com iOS app, we decided to test media buys across many channels, including social (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Given the high media cost associated with our plan, we had a limited budget for creative production, specifically for the coveted video asset we dreamed to make. Once we had set our sights on taking the video to the movie screen in the form of pre-movie advertisements featured in the "First Look" segment, we had to find a way to make content that we were proud of while also staying within budget.
So what did we do? We began exploring a range of styles and landed upon a popular Instagram style: stop-motion. After compiling some of our favorite stop-motion videos for inspiration, we began researching producers that we could potentially work with and who could bring our ideas to the big screen. We found a very talented producer who fit our core demographic, and therefore really "got" our business. This understanding of our product and therefore our customer was important to us and meant that we could lean on her not only for production, but for assistance in creative concepting, storyboarding and scripting.
We landed on several core requirements for our stop-motion video: visually bright colors on a clean white background with a focus on food, alcohol and groceries (the core items delivery.com delivers to our customers). We also wanted the video to have no voiceover or human faces, and instead rely upon the sounds one associates with a mobile device (tapping, text message receiving, etc.) and images of mobile phones; products we deliver (takeout food, beer, candy) and human fingers tapping on the phone or moving the products. The result was exactly what we wanted: a video that stood out from the monotony of standard commercials in both visual and audio content.
We didn't, however, stop at the big screen. Once we had this video that we loved and which we felt conveyed our value proposition, we wanted to optimize it for viewing across different channels. Given the varying mediums of mobile app campaign media buys (social, display, etc.), our asset also had to be flexible enough for various time durations required by these channel buys. The storyboard and script enabled us to crop the video at the beginning or end, and to "speed up" the stop-motion section as needed, to fit the varying video lengths.
We ran our video across many media, from movie theater preview ads to third-party-mobile app interstitial ads to social campaigns (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Focusing on our goal of driving downloads of the delivery.com mobile app, we were able to exceed our original goal and found our paid and unpaid social placements of the video to work the best. The video itself drove the highest volume of mobile app downloads of any single ad unit in our mobile app download efforts (3,000 downloads since launching in Q4'16). Additionally, the KPIs on campaigns that featured the video ad outperformed our static (single image) ads on all of our social platforms and specifically, our click → download conversion rate exceeded 30% in many campaigns.
Overall, we are very proud that we were able to develop a new video asset that met our campaign goals, limited our spend and communicated the delivery.com brand in a fun, modern and engaging way.
